not sure if this is really a good idea, since i don't know how many hard core programmers there are here and my experience in the field is developing, but it seems to me that if we, the forum members, could develope some sort of freeware program for the masses (i.e. a flight sim of some sort, mathematical program) it would be a great way to spread the knowledge of x-prize and space in general. i presume that a lot of our members know a good deal of either physics, engineering or computer science, and if some group of us could cook up a relatively small but still either fun, educational, or useful tool (or preferably more than one of those), it would be a great boon to the knowledge of x-prize, at least among the internet community. this might be too ambitious of an idea, but if many people other than me wouldn't mind spending time working on something that will help this organization we are all so fond of, i'm sure we could do it.

I can't take the leading(mannagement) part, cause I just don't have the time with my job, but I really can help a lot on the programming side.

I have Developed 4 diffrent 3D engines in total, in 2 diffrent companies.
1 at TrueVision3D (Toghetter with Sylvain Dupont) and the other 3 versions at GabitaSoft , company I own toghetter with my 2 older brothers.

54 frames per second, real time updated on an old Geforce 2 card, using an old 3D engine model.
(currently this is already crap, it's years old, but I can't show new screenshots of the game, until public announced... and I do not have any others)
I'll try to take tomorrow screenshots of an empty terrain with basic effects without showing the game, so I can give you an impression of the new system.

I'm able to do the programming side, for free, using our 3D engine, but NOT open source, and source not shared with other members in the project... other lib files, dll's, MFC (when needed) can be done by others, or be shared with other team members, but not the 3D side, as most other people over here with a company or employee of a company will understand.

- A demo, not interactive, showing SpaceShipOne (and or other teams) going into sub space with their vehicles.
- People can chose in a 2D menu, what team they want to see going into sub space.

if this is done, we can add, part by part new stuff, as example:
- Simulator of a vehicle (with real physics), we can use ODE or
Tokamak for the physics.
So we let other people try to get SpaceShipOne into space, after deconnecting with the larger vehicle. etc etc
- A small theme park style game, build your own commercial space city and make it a commercial succes..
- A rendered historical movie from Airplanes to Space...

Well, just my idea and suggestions.

@TerraMrs, do you have MSN Messenger ? if you have, can you send your msn address to me in a private message on this forum ? thanx

Last edited by Sigurd on Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

The terrain uses a special way, to support very large landscapes, not only a small island as shown above, objects on it is no problem with the vegetation system, the only problem I would see is, making it go perfectly to a sphere when the vehicle gows into space.

I may need to rewrite the landscape structure to accept it to be a sphere, so a real world.

Last edited by Sigurd on Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm able to do the programming side, for free, using our 3D engine, but NOT open source, and source not shared with other members in the project... other lib files, dll's, MFC (when needed) can be done by others, or be shared with other team members, but not the 3D side, as most other people over here with a company or employee of a company will understand.

yea, open source wouldn't work in that case, but that doesn't really matter. if you could do the graphics aspect i'm sure some other people can do the non-3D UI and background stuff, graphics would be great, i assume that's the hardest part with something like this.

btw, is your engine a for sale sort of thing or just for your company, i've been looking for a good 3d engine/design platform that's hopefully not too expensive for personal use.

btw, is your engine a for sale sort of thing or just for your company, i've been looking for a good 3d engine/design platform that's hopefully not too expensive for personal use.

It's not for sale, it's only for intern use and close Partner Companies.

But as I mentioned above, I was also one of the TrueVision3D owners, I left, but it still exists and one of my best friends (Sylvain Dupont) is still leading the programming side over there, it's cheap, has a lot of features, and you can use it in ANY .net language, C++ 6, Visual Basic 5 & 6, Delphi.... check out http://www.TrueVision3D.com

It's slower as my own engine, cause it's "general" optimized, not for 1 single game project, so you'll have a 10% loss of speed compared to a custom game engine, but on the other hand you'll never have to put years of development in the graphics side.The landscape at TV3D has no lod, but it supports paging, it's slower, but still nice and I think Sylv will add Reflecting water in the next version.

Quote:

java is my forte.

Well, if you wanne make Visual Graphics, I may suggest to learn C++ it isn't that much diffrent in style with Java, but java is way slower...And each operation that's slower, is a disaster for real time graphics..

Quote:

X-price only on Xbox...

X-Box and X-Box 2 will not be a problem for me, on code side, but the license is a problem, and that one isn't free..

So what we still need is:
- Artists , I have artists in my team, I'll see if I can convince one or more to join.
- I guess that's all

Oh yeah, an other option is to make the project with TrueVision3D, cuase it's free, for free usage, so all people can work on it, so it's also an education project for a lot of people.
Only it bothers me, that the cpp support isn't that well yet.

Yes that's a good option, maybe it's also good in that case for using TV3D, Any other engine, or even an other OPEN SOURCE engine.

Your ideas are welcome, if some other people have ideas, let them come in, so we can soon make a vote or so.. to chose what we'll do.

I've been working with TerraMrs today on an other idea for the x-prize community forum itself, we'll announce it very soon.

For the software project, we should keep in mind, to keep it very realistic, not making a large game project, but something fun, usefull or other good properties without the need of 1001 people working on it and not more then 1 year development or so.

So people who showed intrest:
TerraMrs (The creator of the idea)
Sigurd (I hope to help on all fields I can)
Voyager4D (Web programmer, Java, used also ASP, Perl, knows cpp a bit and has been webprogrammer since year 2000)
LightOwl (Seems to be intrested in a little bit more opensource, has some programming skils, as example Borland Delphi but he can also use other programming languages when needed)

I guess if intrest keeps comming, it can become a good project personally I think open source is maybe really good with a more larger team, so everyone can take a side of the programming and we can use free webspace from sourceforge (and it gives the project also good source forge links advertisement )

That's no problem Dr. Peter H. Diamandis(Founder and President) is really answering very fast on e-mails, so if we need anything or wanne ask something we can contact him without problem.

Great. I suggest you write him an email explaining our intension to start a development team. I guess there also is some legal isues if we need to use the xprize name on our software. Maybe we should offer him to make the software in association with the xprize organization.

That's no problem Dr. Peter H. Diamandis(Founder and President) is really answering very fast on e-mails, so if we need anything or wanne ask something we can contact him without problem.

Great. I suggest you write him an email explaining our intension to start a development team. I guess there also is some legal isues if we need to use the xprize name on our software. Maybe we should offer him to make the software in association with the xprize organization.

I'll wait before sending him an e-mail, not going to bother him before we're sure we can succeed with the current team, with creating the project.
(So we first need a deacent planning and all written out, so he can get all information at once)